


rex quondam rex futurus

by goblindaughter



Category: Shades of Magic - V. E. Schwab
Genre: Gen, Spoilers, White London
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-04 06:24:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18337967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goblindaughter/pseuds/goblindaughter
Summary: The someday king has come.(Gentle reader, if you have not yet reached book 3, click on.)





	rex quondam rex futurus

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, it's "cry about Holland" o'clock.
> 
> Aka: maybe Holland doesn't get a happy ending BUT HIS LONDON DOES.

This is how a legend starts.

#

Here is the king, in the Silver Wood. Here is the king with green leaves in his white hair, green leaves above him, silver boughs weighted with tiny silver buds, and by his hands grow tiny red flowers, like drops of blood. Sunlight lies dappled over him. Not the thin sharp light of winter, but gold and rich; the breeze blows warm, and the wood's new canopy breathes _Holland, Holland, Holland._

And this is how they find him, his Iron Guard. They ghost through the woods, weary shadows, sleeves pushed up and collars loosened in this sudden fair weather. A tall dark woman leads them—Ulrikke, who was Ojka's second, who never thought she would be head of anything, scarred and broad and inked (one day they will call her the Spring Queen, but now she is only the captain of the Iron Guard, and by the very edges of her fingernails, at that). At her heels runs a pale, equally-scarred slip of a child. Little Nasi, who is always there around the castle, who no one had the heart to say no to, when the word came they had found their king.

And here is Holland.

They all stop, fanned around him. Tension sings in the air. Ulrikke kneels at his side, presses her fingers to the side of his neck, searching for a pulse, but they all know she will find none before she says it. She speaks the words anyway. "He is dead."

They will say, someday in the future, that Nasi's left eye turned black then and there.

That is not quite true. It will take weeks before the tendrils of black snake out of her pupil, coalesce, drown the newly-bright hazel. But it makes a better story, if she looks up from Holland Vosjik with one eye full of night.

(Nasi herself grows many a legend of her own. Child of the Kosik, defender of London, general, worldwalker, first _Antari_ after the death of the King in the Wood. Some call her his heir. And in a way she is—but that's another tale.)

In the end the Silver Wood does not let them take him. The trees wrap their roots around him and will not let him go, the boy who bled in the river, the man who gave up everything he had, and then one last thing.

So Ulrikke draws on her magic, that comes suddenly and easily, like a river in flood—Nasi hears her gasp, the sudden joy of it, incongruous—and shapes for him a cairn from the earth. The runes of power inked onto the backs of her hands glow and flow and burn as she works, spilling into new patterns, flowers and vines and leaves. It looks like it hurts, Nasi thinks, (and oh, it does, it does), but she does not flinch once.

She carves no name into the cairn. They all know who it belongs to. Nasi bends to pick the flowers, and lays a posey at the foot of the grave. "I'll come visit," she whispers. The wood seems to bend around her for a moment— she feels seen, watched; the wind in the leaves pauses just half a second, as if to acknowledge the promise. Then it comes back, and Ulrikke says, "Come along, child."

They go back to the castle, under canopies of flowers, through streets that run green, through melting snow.

#

There is a story every child in this London will hear. It will begin: _once there was a boy in the Kosik, and his eye turned black._ It will end: _and in Makt's greatest need, the Wood will open up and he will wake._

#

For the next seven years, it is spring.


End file.
